Residual aligning torque is a moment produced on a tire tread at the footprint with the roadway that causes a twisting force on the tire when the lateral force equals zero. Original Equipment Manufacturers (“OEM's”) of automobiles and trucks specify a range of acceptable residual aligning torque that tires must meet to satisfy OEM's new tire programs. During tire design, designers use finite element analysis programs to calculate a tire's residual aligning torque. U.S. Pat. No. 6,083,268, hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety, discloses a design method in association with a finite element analysis to iteratively loop and converge upon a solution to a specific design.
In the past, tire designers have used a design method that includes repetitive steps that has sometimes been both inaccurate and expensive. For example, tire designers create a tire model and run a finite element analysis of the model, receive a calculated residual aligning torque number as output, and then produce tooling from this design. With this tooling, tire designers produce experimental tires and then test the experimental tires to measure the residual aligning torque (among various other tire characteristics). Tire designers have not always been able to predict the measured residual aligning torque in the experimental tire. As a result, the designers may have to redesign the tire and the related tire tooling because the experimental tire has a measured residual aligning torque that varies significantly from the calculated residual aligning torque, resulting in delays in tire programs and increased costs.